CILC continues regional cooperation in the Western Balkans

CILC continues its cooperation with GIZ in a new EU funded project in the Western Balkans. The overall objective of the project “Fight against Organized Crime and Corruption: Strengthening the Prosecutors’ Network” is to improve and promote cross-border and international judicial cooperation in the countries of the Western Balkans in order to fight organized crime and corruption.

The project builds further on the successful cooperation between CILC and GIZ’s Open Regional Fund for Legal Reforms, which was established in 2008 under the Balkans Enforcement Reform Project (BERP), though now the focus has shifted from ‘enforcement law’ to ‘law enforcement’. In the project the prosecution offices of the countries in the region will be advised how to apply the various legal instruments available for cooperation in cross-border investigations and prosecutions. Furthermore, the project intends to strengthen the existing prosecutors’ network in the region and tie this to other cooperation structures like EUROJUST and the South East European Prosecutorial Advisory Group. The backbone of the project will be the secondment to each prosecution office of highly experienced EU prosecutors. These will be supported by national and international short-term experts, as well as regional expert working groups.

The project is implemented under the responsibility of a management team, chaired by a Dutch senior project leader. CILC’s deputy director is one of the other two members of the management team and has the role of project manager international in the project. The project started on 15 November 2011 and will run until 15 November 2013. A first meeting of the Steering Committee of the project took place in Zagreb on 2 March 2012. After the first Steering Committee meeting, the project was officially presented at the EU Information Centre in Zagreb. Through a video-stream this press conference was transmitted to Belgrade, Podgorica, Prishtina, Sarajevo, Skopje and Tirana.